End of the Year, End of an Experience

In the past month, Peet’s had been getting ready for the holiday season with special blends of coffees, teas, candies, chocolates, drinks, promotions, etc. And that has gotten me into the holiday spirit earlier than usual. But it also serves as a daily reminder that this is the grand finale of my employment at Peet’s, after which I will hopefully be working somewhere that has more relevance with design and/or environmental issues.

Having said that, I’m beginning to make some progress with my portfolio site. The structure of the site is pretty much set; I just needed to fine-tune the content. Once that is done, I could move on to other areas of the site, including this blog.

Good Will Hunting

A few nights ago, I caught the latter two-thirds of the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting. I probably haven’t seen it for seven or eight years, and I noticed a few new things that I hadn’t before. (One would be the frequent use of the late Elliott Smith’s music throughout the film.) I also couldn’t believe how young and thin Matt Damon and Ben Affleck looked. It’s one of those things where you can’t believe how fast ten years go by, yet so much had happened.

I find this movie more relevant to me now than seven or eight years ago because of where Matt Damon’s character, Will, was in his life. While I can’t say that I am just like Will, we both have something that we’re good at and we both have the potential to succeed.

The problem is that we don’t know what we should do for the rest of our lives, or that we’re afraid to figure that out. And as Robin Williams’s character pointed out after Will’s monologue of all the bad things that would happen if he had taken a government job cracking some enemy code, Will is so bright that he thinks ten or twenty steps ahead and would envision a bad outcome, resulting him to not act, to stand still, and to not go anywhere in life, something that I can relate ever since I became self-conscious.

Current Plan

This movie made me realize that while I cannot confidently decide right now which of the two or three of my desired paths would be best for me in life, I should start at one of them. If I end up not liking it, or that I get bored with it, I can move on, while I’m still young and unattached. One thing I like about being me is that I have so many ideas about the things that I’m passionate about, but at the same time I don’t like that part of me who doesn’t have time to pursue all of them. If I explore one idea, ten more will emerge, but I become frustrated and I wouldn’t be able to get to them in a timely fashion.

With that in mind, I have more or less an idea of what I want to be doing in the coming year. If that doesn’t work out, I would have a few back-up plans, and that should probably last for two, three good years.